Giants owner John Mara believes a deal with the referees wouldn't have gotten done so quickly without the Monday Night debacle. Andrew Mills/The Star-Ledger

John Mara is usually a mild-mannered guy – usually, that is, until a referee blows a call against the family business. Put it this way: His fist has introduced itself to many press box tables when that happens.

So this was the question posed to him yesterday: How would he have reacted if the now-infamous Fail Mary play on Monday Night Football went against the Giants instead of the Packers?

“I probably wouldn’t be talking to you right now because I’d be suspended,” Mara said from his office.

Suspended?

Or arrested?

“One of the two,” he said with a laugh.

And no, for the record, Mara wasn’t buying into the NFL’s official stance that there was “simultaneous possession” between Seahawks receiver Golden Tate and Packers safety M.D. Jennings on the play that led to the firestorm. "It looked to me that the Green Bay player had possession of it," he said.

But the play was the reason that a three-week lockout was settled without the replacement refs taking the field again. Mara, who was not directly involved in the talks but in constant contact with league negotiators, was clear: The agreement reached late Wednesday night probably does not happen if the replacement refs didn’t make one of the worst calls in recent football history on national TV.

“I felt like we were moving toward a contract even before Monday night, but I’m not sure we would have gotten it done this week,” Mara said. “I think the game sped up the process – on both sides.

“For the owners, or at least from my point of view, it was the final straw because I started to see it would be very difficult for replacement refs to do their jobs the following weekend.”

So now that the national nightmare with Lingerie League rejects and Division 3 retirees is over – the real refs were back for the Thursday night game in Baltimore – perhaps this is a good point to reflect on what we learned from the ordeal.

For starters, fan outrage actually does matter. It wasn’t just that blown calls were deciding games. It was that fans, from coast to coast, were furious about it and vented in ways that didn’t exist before. Social media didn’t get this deal done, but it certainly didn’t hurt that the President himself was tweeting that he wanted the real refs back.

But mostly, we learned – believe it or not – that we actually like the guys in stripes. The locked-out refs became such sympathetic figures during this month that you wondered what would happen if the lockout dragged on through the season. Referee fantasy leagues? An Ed Hochuli reality show?

The outpouring of support was a game changer. It’ll disappear the first time a yellow flag hits the turf, of course, but the first three weekends proved that refereeing an NFL game is not something that anybody off the street can do, and that’s something we should all remember.

You know, for at least 15 minutes.

“Us as athletes, we’re going to complain about everything,” defensive lineman Justin Tuck said. “There could be a play when I hit the quarterback directly in the head and I’ll swear up and down that I didn’t do it. We all know the referees are going to still make mistakes, but it won’t be those blatant ones that cost teams a game.”

Tuck expects that players will have to get re-adjusted to the regular refs, especially the receivers and cornerbacks who seemed to be playing under a completely different set of rules. He’ll actually miss the scrums that seemed to turn each game into a Mad Max movie, but not the four hours that took to play them.

The best part: We can stop talking about this. The best officiating goes unnoticed. The real refs will no doubt be more scrutinized than ever for a week or two – imagine if they screw up a big play? – but no realistic fan expects perfection. Unless, of course, the calls go against his team. Then he’ll beg to have the replacement refs back.

“I suspect in a week or two, we’ll be back to complaining about the regular referees again,” Mara said. Given the past few days, is there a football fan out there who wouldn’t welcome that return to normalcy?